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Thursday, January 10, 2013

Master the Mess in a Month - Day 8

Today was the kitchen. For some, this room is the biggest nightmare of all, since so much activity goes on in the kitchen. I spent about 15 minutes last night going through some of my cupboards, and finished off the rest today as well as some surface cleaning. My oven and tile floor could use a good scrubbing, but that will happen later. The purpose of this month is to get through the entire house decluttering, organizing and doing a bit of surface cleaning along the way. I have my Kitchen Aid and my calendar on the counter. I know that it makes my counters a little bit cluttered, but I use them every day and don't want to change that. Once I have an electronic way of calendaring I will give it up the calendar, but not for now. If I get to the point where I use my Kitchen Aid once or twice a week instead of most days, then I will consider putting it in a cupboard somewhere. The best solution would be to have a way to use it where it is not on my counters where I also don't have to move it back and forth. One step at a time. I keep my cupboards in pretty good condition. I went through them about 6 weeks ago, so it was easy this time.

I don't like to have ingredients or other food items in my pantry that are past the expiration date. I am sure some of you disagree with me on this, and the food would probably be fine for a period of time after the date. It is nice we can all do what we want and don't have to convince everyone else to do it our way. I know someone who is fine eating their home canned food 20 plus years later and eating 24 year old food they dehydrated themselves. They think I am crazy rotating my food so regularly, but I eat my food and they can eat theirs so we can both be happy with our choices. I like to see what food I have and what needs to be used before it expires. You can see that I put the expiration date on the can again in bigger print with a black marker. This makes it easy to see. I put the cans/boxes that need to be used first in the front. I may need to do a pantry challenge next month to use up some of the dry
beans and grains that have been around for a while and need to be used
up and replaced. One thing I like that Bea does at Zero Waste Home, is that she buys one or two kinds of grains, beans and pasta and rotates them. It would be easier to rotate things if you buy less variety at one given time. I found some recipes to make bread with the semolina flour that I have had so I can use it up.

Each time I go through my cupboards, I check out the plastic containers I have and make sure they all have lids and are in good condition. If they don't, I get rid of them. I use most of the same dishes and pans to cook with, but if I find something that hasn't been used for 6 months I get rid of it. I have replaced old or broken things with better quality cookware and less of it. I like being able to open my cupboards and know where everything is and have it easy to see and to get to. Here are a few pictures of some of the cupboards: